Alyssa Brown and Dr. Jenet Erickson
Main Text
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a United Nations treaty declaring the government’s duty to protect children and to provide for their material and immaterial needs, essentially seeking to protect children’s rights. On a worldwide scale this treaty has been greeted with open arms as it has been ratified by 193 UN States Parties. Surprisingly, only two countries, the United States and Somalia,1 have not ratified the CRC so there is considerable international pressure for the United States to increase its involvements in human rights through ratification.
By comparing and contrasting the United States’ existing law with legislation that would be required under the Convention, exploring underlying assumptions and possible interpretations of the Convention through examining the changes the treaty has brought about in other countries, and exploring the potential risk to national sovereignty in ratifying a treaty that would be overseen by a body outside of the United States government I was able to collect a multitude of information about the Convention that suggested it would be best if the United States did not ratify the CRC.
Though I did not fail in anyway, I did have a group of editors for Prelaw Review that challenged my ideas. Because they were in favor of ratifying the CRC, they forced me to consider the other side of the argument. This was a great exercise for me because it helped me to strengthen my position and delve deep into research of literary texts through Lexis Nexis (the legal research website used by BYU). We had difficulties because it was so easy to take the CRC from an individual basis to an international basis (for example, we often would begin studying a specific case and then wondering about cases in the international courts). And trying to bridge this gap in a single paper led me to focus on a specific topic–education– for the Prelaw Review paper and to address the international issues in the honors thesis.
In the research for the honors thesis, I found that the United States already upholds most aspects of the CRC and those that it wants to endorse it has adopted through Optional Protocol — and these usually include reservations. Despite its ratification of the Optional Protocols the US felt necessary to ratify, some believe it should still be ratified. These proponents argue that the CRC covers many facets of children’s rights, encourages government spending on welfare, and has benefited other countries. However, I discovered that there were ideological concerns with ratifying the CRC, I would like to discuss these in greater detail. First, parental sovereignty. This treaty may be interpreted in such a way that it could compromise the parent-child relationship. I like this quote from Bruce and Jonathan Hafen which explains, “a child . . . is not possessed of that full capacity for individual choice which is the presupposition of First Amendment guarantees . . . . Indeed, reducing the discretionary judgment of authority figures can create ‘a vacuum that deprives children of an affirmative source of support and guidance’” (Hafen and Hafen, p. 456). Another reason against ratification is that the CRC undermines parents’ rights to determine what is best for their child and gives the government sovereignty. As Richard Wilkins explains, “the CRC promotes a ‘new concept of separate rights for children with the Government accepting [the] responsibility of protecting the child from the power of the parents . . . ” (Hafen and Hafen 450).
In addition to these ideological concerns, I researched the policies in the United States that would be required to change including: sexual education (bringing about concerns that pregnant youth would not need to inform their parents if they had an abortion), education, corporal punishment, and religious worship. I argue that it is unnecessary for the United States to take the risk in adopting the CRC that contains harmful ideologies and that conflicts with domestic law because domestic laws already seek to protect children and proceed to give an explanation of how the United States laws fulfill the needs of children.
This research won first place in the undergraduate division of the Stand for the Family Conference put on by BYU’s J. Ruben Clark Law School, which included a $700.00 prize. I presented the research at the conference and the research was published by the Ruth Institute. In addition, the research for BYU’s Prelaw Review journal was published and sent to every law school in the nation. Finally, my honors thesis was approved and I wrote the thesis, now it is undergoing minor revisions and the defense will occur before graduation in February 2011.
Further research that could be done would be keeping up on what current media is saying about the CRC and whether the Obama Administration is following up on ratifying the treaty. Also, it would be interesting to see how the CRC is affecting other countries that have ratified it. For example, in my paper I discussed that Canada has now mandated Sexual Education; was this brought about because of the CRC or advised by the Committee of Ten who review countries’ compliance with the CRC? Finally, I would love to research its implications on abortions — the interpretation of the rights of the child. Though this was intended to be ambiguous (not stating whether a child’s life began at conception or birth), I would be interested to know how it has been interpreted or applied in different countries.